Operations

Why You Should Benchmark Internal Metrics

May 11, 2012

Benchmarking establishes a reference point so you can gauge the success or failure of marketing and service strategies even when there isn’t an obvious cause and effect. We naturally want to know how our results compare to our competition and try to benchmark against them. It’s impossible to create realistic and accurate comparisons to other [...]

Read the full article →

Why Benchmarking against Competitors doesn’t Work

May 7, 2012

One statement in “The Numbers that Really Matter to Your Business” got a lot of attention because people didn’t agree with it. I wrote, “There is simply no way to compare metrics from different companies and deliver realistic results.” Responses varied from simply stating that the reader disagreed to explanations as to why I don’t [...]

Read the full article →

Customer Service: The Second Pillar of Social Media

April 26, 2012

Delivering quality service is the cornerstone of every successful business. Start-ups can’t grow into sustainable enterprises without it. Established companies lose market share when service levels drop. The need for a good customer experience is well known and easy to declare. Identifying the specific characteristics required to meet people’s expectations is much harder and changes [...]

Read the full article →

Integrated Marketing: 4 Reasons Social Media is Needed

April 24, 2012

Creating a successful integrated marketing strategy is a necessity in our multichannel marketplace. Silo management of marketing channels wastes resources and reduces results. The days are gone where dominating one or two channels was enough to grab market share. Capturing people’s attention requires multi-faceted campaigns that reach them wherever they happen to land. Understanding your [...]

Read the full article →

F-Commerce Trap 2: Fragmenting the Customer Experience

June 23, 2011

Your customers expect a seamless shopping experience. They want to be able to cross channels and jump platforms at their convenience without having to re-introduce themselves to you every time they venture into a new area. From their perspective, you should recognize them where ever they happen to be. That expectation was more realistic in [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries